Living with Bipolar Disorder Part 1 - Growing Up with Bipolar Disorder

I first realized I was different at age 15. My friends spent their afternoons out riding bikes, going to the movies, and goofing off with the opposite sex. I spent mine somewhere on a pendulum between complete euphoric bliss and suicidal depression. It depended on the day. It didn't take much to trigger me - usually my mother. I lived a life of extremes - I'd get a good grade and want to celebrate for hours, then be angry that no one cared as much as I did about it, spiraling into a fit of rage - convinced that no one really loved me or understood. Bipolar disorder has it's own special rainbow - and all the colors are overly bright.

Somehow, my parents kept me alive, off drugs, and in one piece. I'll never quite understand how.

I have a vivid memory of the first time I tried to do "something rash" as I was always threatening. I say I have a vivid memory as if it's possible to have a dull one of such an event. I had been to a barbeque at a close friends house, along with my best friend. Something happened...to this day, ten years later, I still don't recall what it was. But it set me off. I ranted, raved, called everyone out for all the horrible things they had done to me. I remember feeling persecuted, and everyone else looking confused. I was asked to leave, and my father was called to pick my friend and I up.

On the way home, I unlocked the car door and jumped out. Again, to this day, I don't recall my exact thoughts. Suicide? Escape? I just remember feeling unwanted, unloved, and wanting to get away.

My father, terrified as usual by my irrational behavior, picked me up, screamed at me that it was the stupidist thing I'd ever done, and put me back in the car. By this time I was hysterical, and didn't calm down for several hours. Now, most parents would have checked me into a psych ward, where I would have received an early diagnosis of mental illness(I wasn't diagnosed until age 20). Then, my parents put me on their own special sort of lockdown, which continued for several weeks, until they knew I wasn't going to try anything.

Somehow, my parents kept things together as I went through high school - surviving crisis after crisis with a special kind of luck. To this day, I'm grateful for them holding me together through these years. I soon learned what it was like to be without their guiding presence as I attempted college, and eventually received a diagnosis. I'll share these events with you in Part 2: College Independance and a mood disorder